AI Chat Rate Limits and Fair Use
To keep response times fast for everyone and prevent runaway usage, Accupe applies a few different limits across the AI Assistant panel and the AI Chat page. This article explains what they are, how they're shown to you, and what happens when you hit one.
Daily prompt quota
Every plan has a daily allowance of AI prompts, reset at UTC midnight.
This allowance is tracked per team member, not pooled across the firm, so on Growth's multi-seat plan, for example, each staff member gets their own 50 prompts a day rather than the team sharing a single pool. It is, however, shared across surfaces: it doesn't matter whether you're asking questions in the AI Assistant panel or the AI Chat page, both draw from the same daily count for your account. A prompt only counts once the AI finishes its full turn and gives you a final answer. If it needs to check several things behind the scenes to answer one question, for example looking up a client and then checking their outstanding tasks, that still only counts as a single prompt against your quota.
On the AI Chat page, a usage meter above the chat shows your current standing, for example "7 / 50 prompts today", with a progress bar, a "Resets in" countdown, and a pill showing your plan tier. This refreshes automatically roughly every 30 seconds while the page is open.
If you reach your daily limit, further requests are declined with a message telling you your daily limit has been reached and suggesting you upgrade for more. On Solo and Growth, upgrading to the next plan raises this limit; Elite has no daily cap.
Short-term request throttle
Separately from the daily quota, Accupe limits how many AI chat requests it will accept in quick succession: up to 10 requests within any 60-second window. This burst control is applied per network address rather than per individual login, so it's shared across everyone sending AI Chat requests from the same office network or VPN exit point at the same time, rather than tracked per user account. It clears itself a minute after it was last tripped, and exists to stop the system being overwhelmed by rapid-fire requests rather than to limit your overall daily usage. If you go over it, you'll see a "Too many requests" message and should simply wait a short moment before trying again.
Document uploads on the AI Chat page have their own, separate throttle of up to 10 uploads within any 60-second window. Unlike the chat throttle above, this one is tracked per user account rather than per network, since processing an uploaded file (resizing, text extraction, and analysis) is more resource-intensive than a single chat message.
If your subscription lapses
AI Chat also checks your firm's billing status before answering. If your subscription has been cancelled or marked unpaid, you'll see a message that your subscription is inactive and you need to re-subscribe to continue. If a payment has been failing for more than 14 days, you'll instead see a message asking you to update your payment method to restore access; within that 14-day window Accupe still lets you through so a temporarily declined card doesn't cut you off immediately. Keeping your billing details current avoids any interruption to AI access.
Fair use
These limits are designed for normal day to day firm use: checking deadlines, drafting messages, looking up clients, and analysing documents you've uploaded. If your firm consistently needs more headroom than your current plan's daily quota allows, upgrading to the next plan tier is the straightforward way to get a higher, or unlimited, daily allowance.
Note: the daily quota and the short-term throttle are independent of each other. You can be well under your daily prompt limit and still see a "Too many requests" message if you, or someone else on your network, sends several questions within the same few seconds. In that case, just wait a moment and try again.